LTO Cambodia: A Police Story

Monday, November 8, 2010

A Police Story

Cambodian police enjoy a less than sterling reputation in general and are not known for their fair and impartial dealings with foreigners. That said, I had a pretty good encounter with a few of Cambodia's finest a couple of months back.

I was walking along the side of Sothearos Blvd here in Phnom Penh when some kid on a motorcycle came weaving through traffic going way too fast. Not an uncommon occurrence. As he sped past he weaved wide and accidentally clipped me from behind, catching me in the arm and the back of the leg with his handlebar and foot peg. It knocked me down, but not him. He just kept going.

I was scratched and a bit bruised, but nothing too terrible. Picking myself up I watched him disappear into the traffic ahead, his distinctive bright pink sequined shirt flapping in the wind. I thought he was long gone. But a moment later I noticed that pink shirt turn into a house about 300 or 400 meters up the road. I kept on walking that direction and after a few hundred meters, sure enough, there he was, marked by his pink shirt and nearby motorcycle, kneeling on the sidewalk outside a house delivering instructions to some workers repairing the pavement. And there just happened to be three cops standing there looking at the work being done.

Now I know that, generally speaking, the foreigner is at fault in any accident regardless of the circumstances, but still feeling bruised and miffed I decided to go for it. I waded into the crowd, pointed an accusing finger and scolded him in English for hitting me and running away. I looked around. People stared at me. Nobody seemed to understand anything except that I was angry. So I switched to speaking Khmer and said almost the same thing, but this time to the cops, displaying my bruised arm and pointing back down the street in the direction it happened.

When I was done all eyes turned towards Mr. Pink Shirt. He got a big shit-eating grin on his face and denied everything. The cops were having none of it though. My story made good sense, it jived with the fact that he had just come from that direction and his nervous smile branded his denial 'bullshit.' The cops immediately started lecturing him and moving in on him. The other Khmers there backed away. He continued his denials, which seemed to be making the cops angry. Other people nearby started to look our way, attracted by the sounds of angry words. One of the cops grabbed him by the arm and stood him up.

With all this commotion, I decided it was time for me to move on and just strolled away, continuing up Sothearos. About 30 meters on, I looked back. A cop had him by the scruff, Mr. Pink Shirt was screaming, 'no, no, no...' (in Khmer) and a crowd was forming. I felt completely satisfied with the results and continued my walk.

Kudos to those cops. Good job.

3 comments:

SimOliverNovember 9, 2010 at 9:30 PM
Wow, the times they are a changin'.

I knew someone some years back that was hit by a rich Cambodian. The excuse made as to why it was the foreigner's fault was that if the foreigner hadn't been in the country then the accident wouldn't have happened. Case closed!
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Casey Nelson (pseud.)November 9, 2010 at 9:58 PM
"the times they are a changin'"

That probably would have been a better title for this story.
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NathanNovember 13, 2010 at 9:36 PM
Maybe they let the crowd beat him to death: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwpng9GCyz0
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Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.